


Midnight

by NextToSomething



Series: And Long Past Midnight [1]
Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Thor (Movies) RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 19:06:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NextToSomething/pseuds/NextToSomething
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Syd notices something about him he perhaps wishes she hadn’t. And when he sends for her, will she let herself go? Will she let him take the lead? (Now the prologue to And Long Past Midnight)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> What started as a oneshot has now become the prologue to And Long Past Midnight. I Hope you enjoy the continuation of this story!

I'm passed a card. I've heard of this happening in movies, read it in particularly explicit books, of a girl being handed a card from a publicist, or a friend. It's always the set-up for some illicit rendezvous in an expensive hotel, or in the darkly tinted haven of the backseat of a limo. Being handed a card has a very specific, very singular outcome.

And I've been handed a card.

I didn't think he saw me, in the crush that had gotten dangerously mob-like. His eyes were flashing with something so different than what I had expected. He was gracious, and his face smiled, but there was a flinty hardness to his gaze that belied his infamous genial nature. It was as if he could sense this barely contained crowd was dancing dangerously near the edge of losing control.

I don’t think he likes this.

I’m knocked violently to the side, for the third time, and I’m thinking of leaving. But getting out will probably be as hard as it is to stay, so I remain where I am, hoping the ground stays beneath my feet rather than beneath my scraped palms. I'm beginning to doubt that I will get to the barrier to get his autograph before he’s called away.

I’m lucky, though, because I have one advantage over most of the rest of the crowd. I’m a head taller than the lot of them.

I can see him, ducking to hear the names shouted at him, fumbling with proffered cameras and trying to keep up with whose pen he’s accidentally nicked. But more than that, I can see the mounting frustration, the tightening of his lips and the sloppyness of his handwriting. I tuck my pocket-sized collection of sonnets into my purse, feeling suddenly sorry for him. I don’t want to add to this.

I decide to leave then, thinking that I don't want to be here to witness his resignation. I try for one more look, something to tell my sister Tilley about when I get home, when his eyes dart up and I'm caught. The noise and push of the crowd is reaching a fever pitch, but there is a moment of still when he holds my gaze. His lips pinch further, setting his cheekbones into even sharper relief and his eyes narrow. As though I've learned his secret.

I back away, bumping into pieces of the fray and he watches my face for a few moments more. Something contracts in his eyes and I suddenly feel as if he's imagining me in a wholly different scenario.

I feel compromised, intimately caressed, no, penetrated, in full view of the world.

I turn away then.

Once I tumble out of mass of people, I reach into my purse for my cigarette pouch. I've quit, and I keep the pouch with me as a cruel test of my will, but I feel so shaken from the crowd and his pervasive glare that I am tempted to dash six months of agonizing abstinence on the pavement. I toy with snap of the pouch, before finally opening it and pulling out a paper. The motions of rolling a fag calm my shaking hands, and as I touch my tongue to the paper to wet the glue, the need to smoke has almost dissipated. I twirl the thing between my fingers, contemplating, then in a huge feat of strength, tuck it back into the pouch.

Six months is a long time to waste on one frenzied night.

"Miss?"

I look up at the voice, and feel like I recognise the face attached to it, but I don't know from where. The man is tall, a couple of inches taller than me, with a small smile that pricks at my memory again. Luke-- something, I remember. Tilley told me about him, pointed him out in the backgrounds of pictures. This is his publicist, I think.

No, surely not.

He gently takes the back of my hand, and presses something into my palm. He’s looking around, but meets my eye when he closes my fingers around what he’s given me.

It's a card.

I had been holding my purse, and I let it drop from my other hand to hang from my shoulder. I take the card, pulling out of his gentle hold, still feeling very disconnected from the moment. I look up.

"What--" But the man, maybe Luke-- something, is already striding away, head turning quickly to search someone out in the crowd. My fingers itch for that cigarette again.

Looking at the thing, I see it's the business card of a terribly posh hotel. I turn it over and scrawled on the back is the word, "Midnight."

The implications fall on me like a shower of rocks. I’m suddenly embarrassed, thrilled, scared, and embarrassed all over again.

He’s sent for me. He’s talked to another man, his friend, about me. Oh God, he doesn’t know me, or my name! He must have described me; Christ, what would he have said? The tall, skinny black girl? Or more than that? How much did he take from me in that single look? I close my eyes in embarrassment again. He sent someone for me! He’s told him what he wants, and sent his friend to make sure he gets it. Oh God, I feel mortified. Hot. Claustrophobic. Tempted.

“Midnight.”

There's nothing else, a room number or anything. I glance at the screen of my phone. It's close to twelve already, and even if I left now, I couldn't make it back to my flat in time to change.

I shake my head at the thought. Why would I want to change? What am I even doing? Am I really considering going to this hotel? The thought seems absurd. I suppose I'd just walk up to the concierge, ask for Tom Hiddleston, glib as you please. The image makes me want to laugh.

But even in the ridiculousness of the idea, my heart flutters against my ribs. The press, almost urgent, of the card in my hand, the silence of the transfer, almost an illegal transaction. It feels terribly covert. The whole situation seems made of Plasticine, cartoonish and easily squashed. His look, pinning me to the spot and laying trespass on my body. I've never felt so desirable. I can’t go to the hotel. But, oh, I think I will hate myself forever if I don’t find out where this rabbit-hole leads.  
I hail a taxi, before I can think any further, knowing I'll be blowing the rest of what I've allotted for spending money this month on the fare. But at least I'm not smoking.

By the time I arrive at the hotel, I've almost talked myself out of going in. It's still a bit until midnight; I could still leave without being discovered. I could go home and tell Tilley about the look we'd shared, about the steel of his eyes and she would get too excited over the romance of it all. She'd tell me I should have gone in; she'd be so upset that I hadn't found out what happens at midnight. I think I have a pretty good idea.

And that idea twists uncomfortably in my stomach. 

I get out of the taxi and try not to choke as I hand over the fare. I'll have to take the tube home. After. I choke again.

The lobby of the hotel is hip and multi-level, with splashes of magenta and red up-light on the white plaster walls providing most of the dim moroccan ambiance. Sprays of fresh flowers in tropical, expensive colors decorate most of the flat surfaces from tall, narrow vases. I glance to the concierge, a bored-looking woman behind a tall front desk and decide to look around rather than embarrass myself by asking for his room number. Or whatever it is I'm supposed to do. 

Instead, I wander the lower level of the pink-and-red lit lobby, over through a narrow doorway to an even more dimly lit lounge and bar. There are low tables with massive leather armchairs pulled close. It smells of actual incense and the scent makes me believe further that I’ve wandered into a dream.

It occurs to me then that this is where I might find him. Or, if I don’t leave quickly, where he might find me.

The panic hits me fresh, and I’m afraid I’ll see him at a table, I’ll meet his gaze again, and he’ll know I’m exactly the type of girl he supposed me. Only I’m not. I’m a girl who works three jobs and micromanages her money like it’s her fourth, a girl who loves her sister and never stays out this late. But, oh, if he sees me, I’m a girl who meets strange men at hotels. I’m a girl who only needs be handed a card.

I’m leaving.

I turn and as I make it to the narrow doorway to exit, a hand reaches from the dark of the corner of the room. It catches my wrist in long, cold fingers, and I don’t move any farther. He’s caught me, again.

He steps out from the shadow of the corner, and I would laugh at the absurd cinematics of his slow step from the dark if I hadn’t seen his eyes first. His stare slices deep, right to the centre of me, as if he knows my entire life-story. I realise he must have watched me come in, he would have seen my wavering confidence, and he saw me try to leave.

He steps close to me. He's tall, I knew he was, but it isn't until we are toe to toe that I see how tall. It's not often that I can look up into a man's eyes. 

"I didn't think you'd come."

His voice is low and sonorous, his eyes wandering over my face. Stopping at my mouth. 

"Did you really?" I'm surprised at my voice, also pitched low and steady. 

His eyes stay at my lips as he chuckles darkly. 

"No."

He glances up again. He's daring me to say something, knowing he's reading me like a book. He knew I'd come. 

"You're Tom Hiddleston." I squeeze my eyes shut. I wish I had said anything but that. 

His hand is still at my wrist, and he slides it further up my arm. I open my eyes. 

"I know my name, darling." He shifts his weight, coming closer. "What I don't know is yours." 

His voice is sinful. Black velvet. I wish I had a name he could wrap his voice around, drape it in that velvet cloak, exotic and poetic. 

"I'm Syd," is what I say, instead. 

His mouth curls just a little, and his eyes narrow. It's as though he can't decide if he likes what he's heard. 

"Sid?" he repeats, sounding unsure. 

"It's--" Oh, I wish he would take a half step back. Just enough so his breath would stop mixing with mine, so we might be a little more eye level. "It's short for Sydney." 

His tongue darts out to wet his lips and he nods, once, satisfied. 

"Sydney." I'm lost then, hearing him say it. "Sydney," he says again. He rides the long silibant s, sliding and slithering the sound longer than is polite. He breathes my second half, a prolonged, lung-emptying whisper, the long e obscene in its length, my name his vinyasa. 

I'm thinking of a bedroom now. I'm thinking of being stretched beneath him and of his whispering my name in release rather than in enticement. And I know he can see the switch flip. 

His hand drifts down my arm again, catching my hand. He brings it to his mouth and I think he will brush his lips over my knuckles. He surprises me, and turns my hand to lay a kiss over the center of my palm, his eyes boring into mine. I think I feel the flick of his tongue on my skin. I offer no resistance as he pulls me through the doorway to the lifts in the lobby. 

I know where we are going; I know what we will do when we get there. I'm torn between pulling from his grasp, continuing to be the girl I was before he saw me, and riding the lift up to his bed, leaving her behind forever. 

He presses the button and rests his free hand on the wall. He leans into it with a long sigh, eyes closed, though he doesn't release my hand. He looks tired. I wonder if he'll change his mind, let me go. I would almost be relieved. But when the doors ping open, he looks over to me, a wicked smile on his lips, all fatigue chased away by a dark storm brewing in his eyes. 

He pulls me in the lift, swiping his card for his floor, bouncing on his toes until the doors slide closed. He's on me then, pressing me into the wall. He smells like earth and spice, his lean body hard against me. I awkwardly fist my hands in the fabric of his already taut shirt. I don't know how to be like this. He groans as I grab at him, and I think perhaps I've done a thing right. He brings his hands to lace through my springy hair and lays his mouth along the line of my temple. 

"Say my name, Sydney." His breath is hot in my hair. 

"T-- Tom," I breathe, because names are all we have, all he's allowed. 

"Say all of it." He rolls his hips into me, and I feel his arousal. I feel fire. 

"Thomas," I say. I'm trying to keep my eyes from fluttering shut. 

The doors open and he chuckles the deep chested laugh again. 

"Good girl."

I think perhaps now he knows that I'm not his usual fare, if this is his usual game-- pointing out the one he wants and falling into bed. I'm so nervous, and he has to pull me along so often, that I know I'm failing to be the girl he wants beneath him. I have no breathy whispers or coy looks. I don't even think my underwear matches my bra. 

I'm the girl with three jobs and the trouble sister who has never done anything like this before. 

He pulls me into the suite, and it's more of the same from downstairs. Jewel tones and golds, lights low and tinted red through glass and shades, warm and sexual and inviting. It's loft style, the bedroom suspended over the lounge area. I'm trembling and I desperately want to smoke. 

He's watching me closely. 

"Do you want a drink?" He's taken my other hand and is kneading the tight swell of muscle between my thumbs and first fingers. I want his mouth on me, finally. 

"No," I say, though it comes out in a quiet whisper. 

"Good," he answers, and he closes the distance between us in one confident stride. 

His kiss is searing. His lips are thin and firm and it only takes a small twist of his jaw and he's tasting the inside of my mouth. His hands are in my hair again and my hands falter in the space around us before coming to settle, awkwardly, on his forearms. He laughs at me again, against my mouth, and slings one arm around my waist, hauling me against him. I toe off my flats and start on the buttons of his shirt.

My first act of bravery. 

He interrupts it by tugging my jumper over my head. My heart is pounding and I'm gasping for air, when he releases my lips long enough for me to suck in a breath. The moments are blurring together and I'm trying to remember how I got from the back of the taxi to shirtless in Tom Hiddleston's entryway. My arms come down immediately to cover my heated, exposed skin and he takes my wrists again. 

"No, no, Sydney." He closes his eyes and pulls a long breath in through his nose. He exhales heavily through his mouth as he opens his eyes. They contract again, and I feel that intimate caress, that penetration, for the second time. 

"Do not hide from me." His voice is lower than I've yet heard it, and my stomach tenses at the sound. "You are beguiling, bewitching. You are arresting, prepossessing. Gloriously tall and slender as a river reed." It occurs to me that his words sound archaic, too formal, too old for this terrifically modern hotel suite. I wish I had paid more attention when Tilley made me watch his films; I wonder if he is trying to seduce me with scripted words. He finishes the buttons of his own shirt and brushes it off his body. "Sydney," he says again, tasting my name, savoring it, making it longer than it has any business being. A word he has learned to coerce all on his own. "I mean to see more of you." 

He comes to me and I expect him to bring me against his body again. Instead, he turns me and I'm facing a long mirror hung over a small table against the wall. He catches my eye in the mirror and his mouth sets into a firm line. His long curling hair is rumpled, and his eyes are focused. 

"Don't look away, darling." The endearment doesn't sound sweet on his lips. It sounds like a warning. "Watch me discover you."

He unhooks my bra first, sliding it down my arms. I'm aching now, the want at my core almost painful. He brings his large hands up to briefly cup my small breasts, his hands still cold, and my sensitive skin reacts appropriately. He runs his hands down my waist and finds the zipper of my skirt. Never severing that punishing eye contact. The skirt falls to the ground. His fingers dig into my hips and he steps close to me, the heat of his chest pressing into my back. Hooking his thumbs into my knickers, he drags them down my thighs. His eyes bare me even further, more exposed than utter nakedness. I break, and look away, the moment too tumultuous. He brings a hand up to my jaw, and slow but firm, turns my face back forward. 

"Say my name, Sydney. Say all of it."

"Thomas." I try imitating his sinful manipulation of my name with his own, and his eyes are dark as he drags my knickers the rest of the way down my legs, crouching to aid their descent. "Thomas," I whisper again, dancing along the syllables, making love to the open and close, the dips, hums, and slides. I want to make him ache like I ache. 

When he stands again, I know we have reached the last moment I could possibly back out. He is drinking me in and if I wait another moment, I'll never escape. 

I look to the stairs leading to the lofted bedroom, and I think we'll never make it in time. He is watching my indecision from over my shoulder, and stretches the dangerous grin of a crocodile. He means to convince me. 

"Finish good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the dark." his words are against my ear, and his hands are crushingly gripped at my hips. I know that one, and not from Tilley, no, from my own obsessions, reading on coffee breaks and by torch light under my blankets. I turn and take his hands, pulling him for once, up the stairs to the loft.

“Let’s mock the midnight bells,” I say.

He kisses me again at the top of the stairs, and I’ve lost track of the things I am supposed to be afraid of-- him thinking me easy, him thinking me not easy enough, my terror at being had as a part of acting research, my inexperience, his vast experience. It all blurs into one dry, nagging crack, and he douses it with that kiss. I’ll find a moment tomorrow to be afraid; tonight I won’t think of it at all.

We make it to the bed, and we fall into it just as I suppose he wanted. He’s scrambling to pull off the rest of his clothes and my shaky hands help him. His mouth is at my neck, and then his teeth, the hard scrape a new and igniting sensation. His hands find my breasts, the dip of my spine at the small of my back, the dark heat where my thighs meet. He drags his fingers hard over my flesh, the dry skin to skin making for nearly painful friction. I reach for him, close my fingers around him, and he calls out, a wordless bark of a sound. I hear the rip of a foil package and I dig my fingers into the valleys between his ribs, pressing him into me, as I help to roll the rubber into place. 

Unprompted, I siss, “Thomas.” And he sinks into me.

“Sydney,” he groans. “Finally, Sydney.” His words strike me, and I don’t know what he means by them, but suddenly he is moving within me, and my thoughts shift to soft focus. I am thinking instead of how well he fits between my thighs, narrow for narrow. I melt into the feeling of the softness of his hair as I navigate my fingers through their coils. My voice hums out of me in deep-seated pleasure at how our combined length matches up so perfectly, with him seeming to only be just tall enough so that his lips can stay at my temple. I wrap a leg around him, angling to take more of him to me, matching him stride for stride. He is bearing much of his weight on his forearms, bracketing my head between them. He shifts, and moves his hands to cup my skull, bringing me farther from the bed, closer to him. His breath hitches and he is close, closer than me. He knows this, and bows away from me to reach fingers to that cluster of nerves, and suddenly I’m hurtling along with him, stitching together, my entire consciousness seeming to coil into the point where our bodies meet. 

He calls out again, once, twice, his trained voice loud and echoing in the vaulted space. The sound of his primal release is my undoing, and my echoes join his, less staccato and more languid keen.

He collapses into me, my body bearing his full weight for the first time, and I shudder in the aftershocks. Our coupling was frantic, desperate, but no less explosive. I only wish I could stay with him for a while longer, elongate the moment like his voice elongates my name. Bringing me from Syd to Sydney, working class to queen of the Nile. 

But I can’t, and I start to shift from beneath him. My banished fear has started creeping back from my periphery as I scootch to the edge of the massive bed. I realise too late that my clothes are all downstairs. I see a shirt of his hung over the arm of a nearby chair. That’ll do well enough, so long as I can wrap myself in something.

“Syd,” he says, and somehow it touches me deeper, his using the name I gave him, rather than the name he gave me. I turn, clutching the shirt closed. He’s made no effort to cover himself, and I believe his earlier declaiming. He is beautifully made; he is for the dark. 

“I have to go.” I’ve been so reckless; I should have relieved the sitter over an hour ago. Reality is tumbling down around me and already the golden delights of the night are tarnishing, brassy. I reach one hand to my mess of hair, trying to pull the tight spirals back into some semblance of order.

“I’ve seen you before,” he says, his voice still calm and low. I stop fussing with my hair and take a moment to absorb what he’s said. “With your…” He trails off, waiting for me to fill in the blanks. 

I cough.

“My sister, Tilley. Matilda.” My rapid heart rate is climbing further still; of all the unexpected turns the night has taken, this is a the sharpest.

“You bring her to these things. And she’s why you have to leave.” He props up on his elbow on the bed. He hasn’t bade me stay, but for some reason I’m frozen to the spot. Was tonight not the first night he’d seen me? He’d said that, hadn’t he? 

“She adores you,” I whisper, feeling strange bringing her into this room. “Loki, mostly. The helmet, more than that.”

He chuckles, though not in mockery.

“You think she’d be all right with this?” he asks through his smile.

I clutch harder at the shirt. What, “this”?

“She’s a bit young for you,” I say smoothly. Then I falter. “She’s… on the spectrum. This isn’t something she really…” I can’t quite finish the sentence. I can’t quite finish a thought. Again, we have so quickly shifted from one moment to the next, heated shouts reverberating off the plaster walls to talking about Tilley.

“But tonight you were alone. Learning my secret.” His voice is commanding, and though I stand nearly as tall as him, I feel diminutive, small. He had noticed what I’d seen. That defeat, his displeasure at losing control. 

“Tilley’s in bed sick. And I--” I glance around, for nothing in particular, and look up at the ceiling that is still stretched so far above us. “I had this book of sonnets I wanted you to sign,” I tell the air above me. I can’t look at him. I feel ridiculous saying this, now that I know what the skin of his hips feels like against the inside of my thighs. I want to crawl under the covers, though not in his bed. I want to hide.

“Leave the book of sonnets with me,” he says, simply. “And your number, as I mean to see you again.” He sits up, then stands. He fastens a few of the shirt’s buttons, and kisses my agape mouth. I take a moment before I think to kiss him back.

“I’ll call my car to take you home.” He’s already walking down the stairs, still naked, a pair of yoga trousers slung over his shoulder.

I scramble down the stairs, thinking it strange how he’d not asked me a single question the whole night, not a single request, only made quiet, firm demands. And I’d bent to them, glad to loose my hold on control for a few short hours. At the bottom of the stairs, he helps to gather my scattered clothes before pulling on his trousers. Once I’d donned my clothes, his shirt tails sticking out the bottom of my jumper at his insistence I wear it home, he stands between me and the door, looking at me expectantly. 

I dig the book from my purse, fingers brushing my cigarette pouch. That temptation flares all over again. And on the back of the card that started the whole night, I write my number beneath his invitation.

I tuck it in the book, not sure why he wants to keep it, and hand it over. He takes it from me, and examines the worn cover and creased paper from years of dogears. 

“This is well loved.” He smiles. “I know I’ll see you again, now, if only for you to steal this back from me.” 

I look at him, a long moment of silence stretching between us. I am still desperate to leave, to get home to Tilley and the small life that makes sense. I’m glad he hasn’t tried to coerce me into staying. I never would.

“The car’s downstairs,” he says. “I’d walk you out darling, but I don’t want to risk you.” 

“Yeah,” I sigh. I glance at my phone, checking the time. Only a quarter after one. Shouldn’t it have taken longer for my entire life to aboutface?

“Say hello to Tilley for me, Syd.” His words are kind, but still his voice demands something of me. “I look forward to meeting her, again.” Still he’s searching for something; still he wants something.

“I will, Tom,” I say, and that’s the word he wanted. His name, one last time, on my lips. He kisses me hard, though quickly, knowing we don’t have time to get dragged under again. 

“Go,” he says. “Before I change my mind.” 

I make it out the door, and lean heavily against it. I think of all the moments collected in the room just behind me and wonder how it all fit into the space of an hour.

What is my reality now? I scrub my forehead with my hand, refusing to think on it. I have to get some sleep. 

I have work in the morning.


End file.
